Jeremy Moss announces candidacy for Congress, says Democrats need a ‘bold voice' in Trump era
State Sen. Jeremy Moss announced Thursday that he is running for an open Oakland County congressional seat.
The Southfield Democrat is the first candidate to announce for the race after U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Birmingham) said last month she would be seeking Michigan's U.S. Senate seat next year, leaving the 11th Congressional District seat open.
Moss, who serves as the Senate's speaker pro tem, is the first openly gay member of the Michigan Senate, having won election to that chamber in 2018, after serving two terms in the state House. He was also previously a member of the Southfield City Council.
'I represent hundreds of thousands of residents in this district who are looking for a bold voice for Oakland County in Congress,' Moss told Michigan Advance ahead of his announcement. 'I hear about their alarm and anguish about our democracy and about our economy and we're at a critical moment and it's going to call on a new generation of leaders to step up and take action and that's what I'm ready to do.'
Moss says he has been disruptive force in politics from the start, which he believes is the type of leadership Democrats need to project against the Trump administration's attacks on civil liberties and American institutions.
'I'm not a status quo kind of guy. It was disruptive when I ran and was elected as the youngest ever member of the Southfield City Council, but it brought about new economic development and neighborhood growth to the city. It was disruptive when I ran to be the first out gay member of the Michigan Senate, but as a result, we enshrined LGBTQ protections in our state civil rights law, and it is disruptive now as I take on our institution and work to open up our records to public scrutiny and bring more transparency to state government,' Moss said.
Moss has been a peristent advocate for expanding the state's Freedom of Information Act and also sponsored legislation that expanded the 1973 Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act to protect against discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation.
More recently, Moss garnered headlines when he literally stared down state Rep. Josh Schriver (R-Oxford) at his own press conference after the Oakland County Republican introduced a resolution urging the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn its 2015 decision legalizing same-sex marriage.
'I walked into that room and looked at the seat right in front of the podium and thought, 'I'm going to sit right there as he's going to try to inflict harm upon my community. I'm going to make him say it right to my face and then he cowardly left without taking any questions,'' Moss said.
He says he saw it as an opportunity to tell not just his side as a gay person, but also speak for those in the community who support their LGBTQ neighbors and family members and are tired of divisiveness and hatred in politics.
'We got such an overwhelming response to my office, not just from the district, but from across the state, and really across the country, of people telling me this is the way forward,' Moss said. 'So you know my feet and my heart led me into that room and it's just kind of intrinsic within me to keep the fight going and to stand up boldly in this moment.'
Moss said that moment is one rife with concern over the state of the economy and just what Michigan's future will look like, especially with the Trump administration's erratic tariff policy.
'I don't think you could tell me what the tariff policy is today, because it changes every day. It depends on what the president tweets every morning that's created a lot of instability and economic anxiety, especially in our manufacturing economy here in the state of Michigan, so that is top of mind for folks in my district.'
When asked if he had the resources to mount and win a congressional campaign in a battleground state like Michigan, Moss said he was ready for that challenge, but also believes that the 11th District, which spans central Oakland County and includes Birmingham, Bloomfield Hills, Farmington Hills, Pontiac, Royal Oak, and Troy, is much more progressive than it has been in the past, which he says is largely due to the rise of President Donald Trump's MAGA movement.
'Where people in this district, in Bloomfield and Birmingham and West Bloomfield, who may at one point in time traditionally have voted Republican could not sustain this continued attack on social issues driven by Donald Trump, so this district in this county has gone through a big shift over the last several years that I can stand boldly on my Democratic values and absolutely campaign on that record,' said Moss.
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